Tech

Live From RIM's BlackBerry 10 Launch Event

Research In Motion is about to take the wraps of its next-generation smartphones — the first handsets built to run BlackBerry 10. They should be something special — RIM has been developing BB10 for three years, ever since it acquired QNX in the spring of 2010.

Today's event is being held simultaneously in eight cities worldwide: Toronto, New York City, London, Paris, Dubai, Johannesburg, Jakarta and Delhi. Mashable is live on the scene on the West Side of Manhattan, where RIM is sure to put on quite a show. The event is scheduled to get underway at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.

While the first BB10 touchscreen phone has already been leaked like crazy, RIM still has yet to fill in the details on its exact features as well as pricing. We expect those details to be forthcoming as well as a first look at the promised BlackBerry 10 phone with a QWERTY keyboard, and possibly a few surprises.

Will the first BlackBerry 10 phones thrill or disappoint? Will they have game-changing features? And even if they do, will the platform really be able to compete with the mature OSes of iOS and Android?

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